infusoria

Definitions

from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License

n. The many minute aquatic creatures, such as protozoa and unicellular algae found in fresh water habitats

from the GNU version of the Collaborative International Dictionary of English

n.pl. One of the classes of Protozoa, including a large number of species, all of minute size. Formerly, the term was applied to any microbe found in infusions of decaying organic material, but the term is now applied more specifically to one of the classes of the phylum Ciliophora, of ciliated protozoans.

from The Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

A name given by Otho Fr. Müller to an indiscriminate assemblage of minute, and for the most part microscopic, animal and vegetable organisms frequently developed in infusions of decaying organic substances.

A class of minute, mostly microscopic, animalcules, provisionally regarded as the highest class of Protozoa.

In 1838, Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg gave a description of the finer structure of the "infusoria" but it was Ferdinad Cohn, who in 1854 first ascertained with certainty that bacteria belonged to the vegetable kingdom.

Furthermore, it has been found that experiments made in the manner described above answer well with most infusions; but that if you fill the vessel with boiled milk, and then stop the neck with cotton-wool, you ‘will’ have infusoria.

These experiments, you see, all tended towards one conclusion — that the infusoria were developed from little minute spores or eggs which were constantly floating in the atmosphere, which lose their power of germination if subjected to heat.

The reports were endorsed by P.L. Smith, W. Kleinschmidt, Charles Kovar, Louis Forgeron and D. Herrero, which covered all the worlds 'authorities in the disciplines of fish parasites, ringworm, botany, infusoria and aphids.